Dueling health care rallies set tone of debate

Anthony ManPolitical Writer

Opponents to overhauling the health care system dominated the political debate in August, putting Democrats on the defensive by organizing protests, packing congressional town hall meetings and generating hours of video for cable TV and YouTube.

The intense and often noisy opposition may have taken health-reform proponents by surprise early on, but liberals now are fighting back as Congress prepares for its post- Labor Day return to Washington.

In recent days, the AFL-CIO has protested outside an insurance office in Miramar and at an appearance by Republican senators in Hialeah. MoveOn.org held vigils across the country — including in Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale — in favor of health-care overhaul.

One lasting result of the summer of 2009: Shouting matches are the standard form of political discourse.

"We're seeing the electorate becoming more and more polarized," said Charles Zelden, professor of history and legal studies at Nova Southeastern University.

Political scientist Robert Watson, coordinator of American Studies at Lynn University in Boca Raton, said society is worse off for the change.

"Whether it's the right shouting to the left, or the left shouting to the right, or angry politicians shouting, or angry constituents shouting at their elected officials, I think it's a lose-lose. And the big loss is [to] democracy," Watson said. "The whole tone is very dangerous."

Zelden and Watson both said politics in America always has been rough, with intense passions. Consider the era of the late U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who saw communists everywhere after World War II; the period during and after the Civil War; the American Revolution; and, more recently, the Vietnam War.

Zelden, who is currently teaching a class on Vietnam, said he doesn't think the nation is as divided now as it was then, when "society was literally tearing itself apart."

Neither does Margaret Crogan, who taught American history in public and parochial schools in Broward County for 35 years before retiring — and protested the Vietnam War. She said that represented a huge generational gulf.

"We were divided then. My father and I fought every night at the dinner table," she said.

Zelden said he sees what's happening with this summer's health-care debate as a continuation of what many people saw, and learned from, in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, when noisy protesters got lots of media attention.

While it's not new, Watson said, "the level of viciousness and venom" is worse. "The conspiracy fringe on the far right and the far left have become mainstream."

The more partisan 24-hour cable channels are exacerbating the trend, Zelden said. "MSNBC and FOX are literally throwing gasoline on the fire by their approach to these things."

To be sure, not everyone is shouting — especially at events that are gatherings of like-minded people.

But the shouters get lots of attention. To Watson, the high-decibel debate isn't a good way to resolve an important issue like health care.

"When you have conspiracy theorists on the right and MoveOn.org on the left driving the health care debate, no one wins," he said. "It should be the family sitting around the dinner table, turning off the screaming from the right and the left on the television, and they should have a conversation."

That seems unlikely any time soon. When retiree Irwin Cohn of Boca Raton took to the mic last month at a town hall meeting sponsored by Republican congressional candidate Allen West, he announced, "I belong to a mob. And that mob used to be called the silent majority. Look around. They are not silent any more."

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com or 954-356-4550. More about the both sides of the health care debate on the Broward Politics blog at SunSentinel.com/browardpolitics